Stephen Bainbridge's Journal of Law, Politics, and Culture

03/23/2011

Felix Salmon's Wrong on SOX

Felix Salmon's half right. He says "fewer companies are going public' and that that's not good:

What we don’t want is a world where most companies are owned by a small group of global plutocrats, living off the labor of the rest of us. Much better that as many Americans as possible share in the prosperity of the country as a whole by being able to invest in the stock market.

But then he goes off the rails:

How about making a public listing more attractive by relaxing rules like Sarbanes-Oxley? Again, I’m not a fan: the literature is far from compelling that Sarbox was a significant contributor to the decline in public listings.

Comments

Felix Salmon's Wrong on SOX

Felix Salmon's half right. He says "fewer companies are going public' and that that's not good:

What we don’t want is a world where most companies are owned by a small group of global plutocrats, living off the labor of the rest of us. Much better that as many Americans as possible share in the prosperity of the country as a whole by being able to invest in the stock market.

But then he goes off the rails:

How about making a public listing more attractive by relaxing rules like Sarbanes-Oxley? Again, I’m not a fan: the literature is far from compelling that Sarbox was a significant contributor to the decline in public listings.